Give Me Back the Days
by ncfan
Summary: She was once a girl with hopes and dreams. Now, she is a woman with neither.


My guess is that Miss Kouzuki never knew her daughter had joined a resistance cell, but that she likely knew that Naoto had.

I own nothing.

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><p><em>Guests in the opulent Stadtfeld home soon become aware of the presence of the Eleven maid. Usually, the way they are made aware of her is through the crash of shattering glass or the thump of something falling to the floor. Most wrinkle their noses in disgust and wonder why on Earth Mr. Stadtfeld, an otherwise reasonable man, would hire and proceed to keep such an incompetent housemaid. He can afford the best; why keep her?<em>

_Those who pay any attention to the woman beyond registering repugnance at her clumsiness are inevitably struck by her beauty._

_She's not a young woman—in her mid forties, perhaps—but there is an ageless quality to her face, perfectly smooth except for the thin, fine lines that show around her mouth and eyes when she smiles. Far from detracting from her charm, this only adds to it. Her straight, thick hair is a warm, glossy chestnut brown, completely untouched by even a trace of silver. Her eyes are strikingly blue—the very same shade as young Miss Kallen (surely just a coincidence), and quite unusual for a woman of her heritage. They are as clear and deep as the ocean on a perfect summer's day._

_There is an air of impermeable sadness about her, even with those soft, doe-like eyes and that gentle smile. She is, in the eyes of many, far more beautiful than the mistress of the house or the Stadtfeld's daughter Kallen, yet her melancholy is omnipresent. Little thought is given to it, though. Any guest in the Stadtfeld home looks at her, sees her clumsiness and her beauty, and forgets about her as soon as they look away._

_After all, she's just the Eleven maid. She is of no importance._

-0-0-0-

Believe it or not, and no one would blame you for not believing it, Miss Kouzuki was happy once. She has given up her freedom, her happiness and even her name in the face of a world that no longer holds any place for her, but she was happy once. She is scorned by both Britannia and her native Japan, ridiculed by one and condemned by the other, but she was happy once. Her daughter, beloved above all else with the loss of her son, scorns her, all but spits on her, but she was happy once.

Miss Kouzuki, the clumsy Eleven maid with a small bare room whose walls are defaced by profane, virulent graffiti, was once Kouzuki Hitomi. Kouzuki Hitomi was not a broken, desolate woman. Kouzuki Hitomi was a girl with dreams. Kouzuki Hitomi was a girl who wanted to see the world. Kouzuki Hitomi was a girl in love.

It was many, many years before the occupation and, while Britannians could not just come and go from isolationist Japan as they pleased, Japan was willing to accommodate foreign businessmen who thought they could make their fortunes and do some good.

Stadtfeld had been a young Britannian of the minor nobility who came to Japan to do business. He had never made any secret of the fact that he was married, but he was kind and enamored of her and she of him. Hitomi was besotted and quite poor besides. She didn't care that he was married; she welcomed his attentions.

_Hitomi smiles as he sits down across from her at the restaurant table and blushes as he leans over to kiss her. The restaurant, in the fashion of high-end, stylish restaurants, is uncomfortably chilly, but it's just a little warmer for that one, simply gesture._

"_You didn't have any trouble getting in, then?" Stadtfeld accepts the menu from the waiter with a nod and a vague, polite smile._

"_No trouble at all," Hitomi hastens to assure him, straining not to fidget in her seat. She's never been in such a fancy restaurant before. Hitomi feels all eyes on her, as though the world is waiting for her to make a mistake, for her working-class blood and gauche clumsiness to show._

_Taking a sip from the glass of water sitting on the pristine, white linen tablecloth, Stadtfeld nods and looks her up and down. A thin smile appears on his lips. "I see you got my package, too."_

_The package Stadtfeld refers to was a white box tied with black silk cord Hitomi found on her doorstep the afternoon before. It consisted of a knee-length, sleeveless dress made of a smooth, clingy material that Hitomi soon realized was silk. The color is a rich, dark golden, reminiscent of the change in seasons between summer and fall when there is still so much life but the flowers start to droop and the leaves yellow. Accompanying the dress was a long, glittering gold hairpin and a note that read,_

"I had to guess at your size; I hope this fits. —Stadtfeld."

_The young woman dips her head shyly. "Yes, I got it. I suppose it's the only way I could have gotten through the door here, to be dressed like a proper lady." A self-deprecating note enters her voice. "It's the only way I could be pretty enough to be mistaken for a proper lady."_

"_Hitomi…" Stadtfeld shakes his head and rests his fingers on top of her hand. "You'd look beautiful enough for a place like this in sackcloth."_

_Hitomi's smile at this is wide enough that she has to cover her mouth to keep him from seeing her teeth._

The arrangement had been a simple one. Since Stadtfeld never saw fit to bring his wife with him to Japan when he did business and his wife never wanted to come anyway, he was free to be with Hitomi openly while he was there, so long as they went about their business discreetly. He bought a modest but comfortable house for her to live in, made it to where Hitomi would never have to work, even if she did anyway; had to keep up appearances and besides, Hitomi wasn't the sort who could just sit around all day and do nothing.

There were those in her community that disapproved her relationship with a married Britannian nobleman, Hitomi's parents among them, but most forgave her. Hitomi had a not-undeserved reputation of being one it was impossible to stay angry at for long. She was too kind, too sweet, too gentle. She was too beloved among her relatives and friends and neighbors for them to be angry with her for long. They didn't readily accept Stadtfeld, nor Hitomi's relationship with him, but they learned to live with it.

Hitomi had her son Naoto in her twentieth year. It was an easy birth and Naoto was strong and healthy, a bright, cheerful child. The same could be said for Kallen eight years later. They were a joy to her and to their father, and Hitomi loved them both deeply.

"_Naoto? Naoto! Are you dressed? I have breakfast ready for you; your bus comes in twenty minutes!"_

_Eleven-year-old Kouzuki Naoto comes thundering down the stairs on his mother's last word, his backpack swung over his shoulders and his school uniform immaculate, if you ignore the fact that his shirt's not tucked in. Hitomi points that out gently and, smiling apologetically, Naoto stops to tuck his shirt in before setting his backpack on the floor and sitting down at the table._

_His mother can't help but smile to watch him dig into his toast and scrambled eggs with great gusto; Naoto is a growing boy and his appetite is growing by the day. Sitting beside him at the table (Hitomi is still watching the pancakes on the frying pan; Naoto doesn't like pancakes but she and Kallen do), three-year-old Kallen drinks milk out of her cup, waiting for her own breakfast of pancakes._

_Perhaps a little earlier than Hitomi would have liked, the tell-tale rumble of the bus pulling up just down the street has Naoto rushing out the door, ruffling Kallen's hair as he goes._

Life was easy in those years, so easy. Stadtfeld didn't visit quite as much as Hitomi would have liked, but he still made regular phone calls and wrote letters to her and their children, as much as he could get away with without offending his wife too much. Naoto and Kallen loved their father, and didn't give too much thought to the fact that he was a Britannian nobleman living on a different continent most of the time and that their mother was explicitly _not _his wife.

It was just like in all those books, Miss Kouzuki realizes, looking back. So idyllic, so much a fairytale. Entirely too good to last.

-0-0-0-

_She's been hearing whispers about this new craze for months. A drug that can give you back the days you miss so badly._

"You have to want it," _they say. _"You really have to want it."

_Miss Kouzuki looks about her tiny, barren room, with scarlet graffiti spelled out on the walls. She wants it._

-0-0-0-

Britannia fell upon Japan like a plague of locusts, waves upon waves of soldiers, ships so thick in the sky they blotted out the sun. Determined to subjugate the nation to take control of its reserves of sakuradite, Britannia stopped short of nothing to achieve the complete and total domination of Japan.

Japan refused to surrender except by force, and for this, they paid the price. They were stripped of flag, freedom and name, nothing more but a colony of Britannia, whose people had no rights whatsoever.

Hitomi watched her whole world fall apart like one of the plates she would occasionally let slip through her fingers and shatter on the floor in her days as Miss Kouzuki. Gone was the comfort she and her children had lived in; she had heard nothing from Stadtfeld since weeks before the fighting began. They, the three of them, were left on their own in the rubble and the ghettoes, ragged, starving.

"_Here, both of you. Your friend Ohgi-kun found these and wanted you to have them," Hitomi explains to her children as she hands them the packets of chips, one each for the two of them. "It's not exactly what I'd call a nutritious meal, but it's certainly better than nothing." She smoothes down her torn, filthy skirt and sits down on a piece of rubble opposite them._

_Kallen tears open the plastic bag and wolfs down the potato chips with the ravenous hunger of a child who hasn't had anything to eat in four days. Her hollow cheeks flush with hunger. She never notices what Naoto, who eats more slowly, does. In her terrible hunger Kallen never notices that her mother's hands are empty, clenched tight on her knees._

_Naoto narrows his eyes, blue like hers, and frowns. "Kaasan… Didn't Kaname have anything for you?"_

_A strained little trill of a laugh follows this. "No, I'm afraid not. He could only find two and wanted you and Kallen to have something to eat."_

_For a moment, Naoto does nothing. His smudged, dirt-stained face contorts as his jaw tightens and his eyes flash with indignation and pain. Kallen still notices nothing, devouring potato chips with graceless speed. Then, reluctantly, as if with physical pain, extends his half-eaten bag of chips towards his mother. "You can have the rest," Naoto offers softly, "if you want them."_

_It's tempting. It's so tempting. Hitomi's stomach aches with hunger, so hard and so agonizing that at times it's painful even to watch. Even a few potato chips, just a few, would give her some of her strength back._

_But Hitomi just pushes the chips back towards her son and smiles. "Eat it all, Naoto. You're still a growing boy; in these trying times, you need any food you can get."_

_Naoto, face creased with worry, hesitates for a moment, before nodding and continuing on with his chips._

In those days, Hitomi learned to have no faith in her Britannian lover. He had cut off all contact with her when the Empire first made overtures in the direction of taking over Japan, cutting himself off from her like one would rid themselves of necrotic flesh. Hitomi didn't know whether he had abandoned her and their children out of weakness or scorn, and she didn't care. She saw him for what he was now.

Instead, she had faith in her son.

Naoto, her strong boy. If he was no longer the carefree child he had once been, he kept his optimism, even in the face of oblivion. He was his mother's rock, always there when she stumbled with a hand under her elbow, helping her back to her feet. Naoto who stopped his sister from wandering too close to the edge of the ghettoes where Britannian soldiers waited with clubs and guns. Naoto who was the calm voice of reason, at times the only one Kallen would listen to.

And Kallen…

Kallen withered.

Where Naoto learned to worry about his mother, Hitomi learned to worry about Kallen. Kallen was no longer her cheerful, lighthearted daughter. Kallen was a child who had nightmares, who spewed bitterness, who smiled rarely and whose lips were more likely to form a grotesque, bitter line.

_Hitomi's heart seizes as she watches her daughter trip and stumble, her ankle caught in a pothole. A sickening crack splits the air and both she and Naoto run towards her, twin cries of "Kallen!" reaching for the sky._

_To her credit, Kallen does not scream. When her mother and brother reach her she is biting down so hard on her lip that a trickle of blood trickles down her chin, and her eyes swim with tears, but she is silent. She has pulled her now-misshapen ankle out of the pothole and sits on the ground, nursing it helplessly._

"_Kallen, sweetheart…" Hitomi's hands shake as she reaches forward to hug her daughter._

_Kallen's reaction to her mother's attempt to comfort her stings like nothing else can. She jerks back, eyeing those hands with suspicion and lips forming a thin line as she looks her mother up and down. Hitomi's hands fall at her side and she has to restrain herself from asking _"Why do you behave like this towards me? What has changed between us?" _This has been the norm since the invasion started, Kallen actively pulling away from her mother, at times looking upon her with open disdain. It could be the simple disregard a pre-teen feels for their 'uncool' parents, but Hitomi, pessimistically perhaps, suspects it goes deeper than that._

_Once upon a time, Naoto would scold his sister for those contemptuous looks. Now, however, he is too tired, too weary, too heartsick to do such a thing. He simply swings his sister up into his arms—Kallen does not object; _here _is one whom she will allow to touch her—and starts walking again, nodding to his mother. "Come on. We've got to keep moving if we want to reach that shelter Kaname talked about by nightfall."_

For reasons that Miss Kouzuki will never fully understand, Kallen pulled away from her in those days. She pulled away and never came back, not fully. Naoto became the piece in the middle, the one who stood between them to bridge the gap. Hitomi relied upon him and Kallen adored him; he became the glue that kept them all together. Without Naoto the Kouzuki family would crack and splinter like wood beleaguered by an axe.

And when he left, that was exactly what happened.

-0-0-0-

_Sitting the wooden box—entirely too fine for the ugly instruments that rest within—on her lap, Miss Kouzuki pauses for a moment that lasts the scope of an eternity, reaching for a photograph that rests on top of her battered, scratched desk._

_Naoto, Kallen and their friend Ohgi-kun went to the mountains some time after the occupation started, attempting in the manner of young people to get away from the destruction and the chaos. Kallen and Naoto both appeared far older than their years; Ohgi-kun had that same kindly, good-hearted expression on his face as always._

_Miss Kouzuki feels a few cool, deadened tears slip down her face, the tears of a woman who has long since lost the capacity to know why she's crying. Naoto had put a mask up in those days, trying to be strong for his sister and his mother. That confident smile was not nearly as wide as it had used to be; that in itself should have been a clue._

Give me my son back, _Miss Kouzuki thinks to herself. _Give me back the days.

-0-0-0-

Perhaps Naoto had more of his mother in him than just his looks and he was just better at hiding things than his sister or his mother had ever thought. Hitomi had only been able to guess at the depths of his anger against Britannia, and had never thought it deep enough to provoke him to do what he did.

Naoto went off with a few of his friends, Ohgi, that quiet young man Minami, that not-so-quiet young man Tamaki and a few others. Hitomi would have given anything to be able to plead ignorance to just what Naoto and the little band that had assembled under him were going off to do, but even that mercy was denied her.

"_You can't go up against Britannia!" Hitomi exclaims, eyes huge with distress and horror. Naoto sweeps a meaningful glance all around and Hitomi, taking the hint, lowers her voice to a whisper afterwards. They and Kallen have taken up residence in what passes for a group shelter, there with dozens of other refugees. You can never be sure who's a loyal friend and who'd sell you out to the Britannians for scraps; it's best to be careful._

_Naoto's expression as he looks his mother over is all too understanding, and all too pitying; it's a testament to how thin the trying times have worn her self-restraint that Hitomi bristles. The pity of fellow humans has its uses, but Hitomi wants none of it. Not now. Pity does not feed her children nor herself. Pity does not keep them alive through the cold of winter._

_As quickly as pity flits over Naoto's face, something dark and ugly takes its place. "Britannia came with Knightmares and guns. They slaughtered our people, raped our land. They have denied us our freedom, our basic rights as human beings. They need to know that we are still here. We are not animals who can be trained, beaten into docility. We are not ants who can be stepped upon with impunity. We are the Japanese. They need to be reminded of that."_

_These are the words Hitomi has heard in the mouths of many, whispered over campfires and spoken into the ears. Words of discontent and anger, words of the men with wild hopes and dreams. But these are just that, hopes and dreams, and impossible ones at that. Hitomi has not had the wool pulled over her eyes; she knows just how hopeless it is. _

_Britannia is the swam from across the sea; Japan is but a small, devastated nation. Britannia has tanks, planes, Knightmares; Japan barely has guns. Britannia are many; Japan are few. Britannia is strong; Japan is weak. How can Naoto think that he even has a chance against them?_

"_Not against Britannia," Hitomi pleads with him. "You'll be shot dead before you can get out the front door. Please just think about this, Naoto!"_

"_Don't listen to her." A new voice enters the conversation, and Hitomi throws her hands up in the air in frustration when she realizes that it's Kallen's voice. Winding her battered, dirty and in places torn jacket closer about her, Kallen steps out of the shadows to address her brother with a smile. "I think you're right. We need to make Britannia see that this is _our _home, not their puppet." She could not be ignoring her mother more pointedly if she tried._

Hitomi turned out to be right. Naoto's resistance group was routed and forced to return to the ghettoes of Tokyo within weeks, except…

Except they didn't come home with Naoto.

He had been killed, Ohgi explained shamefacedly, to a weeping Kallen and a stony-faced Hitomi, shot down by a Britannian's rifle as they retreated. They hadn't been able to bring his body back with them. Hitomi did not speak to anyone for days, staring, dead-eyed, into face, and Kallen swore revenge against the Britannian "pigs". They never spoke to each other of what they felt to learn that he was dead, and in all likelihood they never will.

Then, a few weeks after Naoto's death, Stadtfeld finally reinitiated contact with Hitomi, making her an offer. He and his wife had come to Japan to live. Somehow, he knew of Naoto's death, and was offering to take in Kallen and raise her as a Britannian lady.

However, there was a catch.

"_What do you mean I can't come with her?" Hitomi's voice shakes as Stadtfeld frowns at her. It's only been a year but he looks so much older than she last remembers him; he's put on ten, maybe fifteen pounds and there are deep lines in his face to match the sandy strands gathering in his hair, a rich, brick red like Kallen's. Hitomi finds this deeply ironic; he has lived in luxury and shows his age keenly, while she has lived in Hell and could be mistaken for a woman far younger than she actually is by those who don't look too closely._

_Stadtfeld shakes his head as though that should be obvious, the chastening gleam in his eyes absurdly reminiscent of the sort a parent would take with a disobedient child. "I should think you know exactly why. I had a hard enough time convincing my wife to allow Kallen to live with us. How on Earth would I explain _your _presence to her?"_

_The look in Hitomi's eyes, though her face is carefully composed, is nothing short of withering. On some level, yes, she does understand. Though the nobility have learned how to put up with these things and do so with grace, Hitomi can't imagine that Mrs. Stadtfeld was too happy to discover that her husband had a Japanese lover, and even less upon finding out that he had children by her (Especially considering that Mrs. Stadtfeld doesn't seem to have any children of her own). Hitomi doubts she will ever know how hard Stadtfeld had to fight to get his wife to accept Kallen; asking her to accept Kallen's mother would be simply too much._

_However, what Hitomi can't help but find just as unconscionable is the idea that she is expected to meekly agree to hand Kallen over to her father and never contact her again. It's simply inconceivable._

_An alternative, however unattractive, occurs to Hitomi, and she draws a deep breath, trying to summon the courage to put the proposal to the air. "Then," she puts forth tentatively, eyes fixed on the ground, "do not bring me to your home as Kallen's mother."_

Stadtfeld would have gotten Kallen one way or another, and it was the only way Hitomi could convince him to let her be near her daughter. Kallen was to come to be Stadtfeld's daughter, and Hitomi was to come to be his maid.

It was not a perfect solution. It was far from perfect. For someone of a disposition less mild than Hitomi's, it would have been absolutely intolerable.

Hitomi, however, had spent a lifetime making the best out of bad situations. She had already lost one child; she had no intention of losing the other one. Even if things could not be as they had once been, even if Hitomi could not call Kallen "Daughter" and Kallen could not call her "Mother", they could at least be together. Kallen would be happier, Hitomi told herself, with a roof over her head, warm clothes and plenty to eat. Things could never be the same without Naoto, but she was sure Kallen would be happier like this.

She was soon to learn that she didn't know Kallen nearly as well as she thought she did.

"_Are you insane?" Kallen explodes on her mother's last word. Her face, chalk white, is stamped with disgust and horror. "I don't want to live as a Britannian!"_

_Sitting opposite her in a small, dingy room where they can have some privacy, Hitomi stares at her daughter in disbelief. "Kallen, he's your father; you're half-Britannian—"_

"_I am no such thing!" Kallen exclaims, face contorting again to show repugnance at even the notion of being Britannian. _Your red hair says otherwise, _Hitomi can't help but think. She looks at her daughter in sadness, sadness that soon turns to offended anguish with Kallen's next accusation. "You just want to be near _him_," she spits contemptuously, nothing but scorn in her eyes as she glowers at her mother._

"_Kallen—"_

"_He abandoned us!" Kallen bursts out, voice commingling anger and pain. "He left us to rot." Her voice is so very small and she looks so young, and Hitomi would hug her, but Kallen just pulls away when she extends her arms. "How can you defend him? How can you?"_

_Hitomi shakes her head. Sternness is not something she is normally capable of, but she will exercise it now, for Kallen's sake if no one else's. "The matter has already been decided, Kallen." The young girl opens her mouth as if to protest, but Hitomi cuts her off. "You don't have to like it; I don't particularly care if you _do _like it. However, he is your father. He has decided to take you in purely on charity; he did not have to. Even if you don't like it, I expect you to be polite when we go to meet him tomorrow."_

In truth, it hadn't been Kallen's choice anymore. Hitomi had already signed over legal guardianship of Kallen to Stadtfeld and his wife. As per the Britannian legal system, Kallen could not legally refuse to come and Hitomi could not legally refuse to let Kallen come. Kouzuki Kallen had become, in the eyes of the law, Kallen Stadtfeld, even before Hitomi told her that she was going to go live with her father.

At the time, Kallen held a fierce hatred against all those among the Japanese who went to work for Britannians. Not just the honorary Britannians but those who became the servants of Britannians and menial laborers. Over time, this hatred eventually cooled into condescending pity. Kallen came to recognize that not everyone had the strength of their convictions to sustain them like she did. She forgave them.

She never did manage to forgive her mother.

_Standing in a new, stiff, crisp linen maid's dress and apron, Hitomi stands, straight-backed, besides Kallen, who still wears the ragged clothes she brought with her from the ghetto, face still smudged with soot and dirt, fingernails nearly blackened, and hair still greasy and tangled._

_They stand at the base of the grand, gleaming staircase, waiting for the Stadtfelds to appear. Kallen stands as straight and stiff as she can manage, attempting dignity even in her filthy, disheveled state. She has not so much as looked at Hitomi the whole time, ignoring her so completely that Hitomi can make no mistake as to Kallen's present feelings for her. The young girl's fidgeting at the end of her sleeve is the only sign Kallen betrays of her nervousness._

_After what seems like an eternity, the Stadtfelds appear._

_At first, Hitomi's eyes are only on them. Stadtfeld she passes over quickly—it's easier not to look at him. Instead, blue eyes settle on Mrs. Stadtfeld. Mrs. Stadtfeld is around the same age or perhaps just a year or so older than Hitomi. She, like her husband's former mistress, does not show her age. Mrs. Stadtfeld's clothing could not be any less like Hitomi's: elaborate, ornate, and low-cut, a stunning satin crimson gown, adorned with jewels. On closer inspection, Hitomi notices that the woman is wearing a great deal of make-up, and she starts to wonder whether Mrs. Stadtfeld didn't dress up so much to intimidate the two newcomers to her home._

_Eventually, Hitomi's eyes fall back on her daughter, and she sees Kallen staring up squarely at her father._

_These days, Kallen rarely lets any emotion other than anger show on her face. Everything else is carefully hidden behind a controlled mask, and no one can tell whether she's happy or sad or ready to burst out laughing anymore. Perhaps that's why how nakedly her emotions show on her face shock Hitomi._

_Kallen's ocean blue eyes are fixed on her father's face. For all that she has claimed to hate her father for abandoning her, Hitomi can see no trace of that hatred there. Instead, Kallen looks very small and very young, her eyes huge in her pale, smudged face. Her lower lip twitches slightly._

_By the time Stadtfeld gets to the bottom of the stairs, however, Kallen has mostly managed to regain her composure. She's waiting, Hitomi realizes. Waiting for her father to wrinkle his nose at her disheveled appearance and tell Hitomi to take her for a bath, to look at her worn clothes and thin, malnourished body with scorn._

_What Stadtfeld does instead leaves both mother and daughter (not to mention Mrs. Stadtfeld, whose mouth drops open in horror) stunned._

_Before anyone can react he wraps his arms around Kallen's thin back, easily swamping her. "Kallen."_

_Kallen's eyes droop, but she does not cry. Her fingers clench her father's coat and Hitomi watches all thoughts of resistance die off her face in that instant. Genuine kindness has always had the power to sway her, even if only a little bit. "Father," she responds, voice thick and barely audible. For one moment, she looks like that little girl who squealed in joy every time her father came to visit with two bouquets of roses in hand, the red roses for Hitomi and the pink roses for Kallen herself._

_Stadtfeld lets go and smiles gently, hands still on his daughter's shoulders. He adopts a slightly more formal tone than the one he had upon hugging her, but it is still noticeably more warm than what is perhaps considered correct. "Kallen, I am sure that the last few months have been a terrible ordeal." Kallen's jaw tightens slightly, eyes flashing, but Stadtfeld doesn't seem to notice. "Your room has been prepared for you. Miss Kouzuki will show you where it is."_

From that moment on, things were never the same between them, and Miss Kouzuki can't see how they ever will be. Kouzuki Kallen became Kallen Stadtfeld, the frail, delicate daughter of the Stadtfeld family, and Kouzuki Hitomi became Miss Kouzuki, the quiet, gentle, utterly incompetent Eleven maid. They were not "Kallen" and "Kaasan" to each other anymore, and Miss Kouzuki can't see how they ever will be again. There is only "Young Mistress" and "Miss Kouzuki".

The story is that Kallen Stadtfeld is in perpetually ill health, and that even before she moved to Area Eleven she was home tutored and rarely left the Stadtfeld estate. If anyone ever asks her what her hometown was like, this will be her excuse for why she can't give a decent answer.

Kallen Stadtfeld is sweet and gentle and kind. She has been so sheltered all of her life; she has never known great suffering, never really known just how hard life can be outside the world of soft beds and plentiful meals. Suffering has just never been a part of her life.

Kallen Stadtfeld does not look upon the Elevens with any particular antipathy. She is really too weak and fragile to summon a great deal of passion over anything, and to her, they are just people. People, just like her.

However, she is like most Britannians who live in Area Eleven—she ignores the existence of the Numbers. When one is in her presence and does not go out of their way to attract her attention, she stares straight through them. Kallen Stadtfeld does not have any more time for them than any other upper-class Britannian girl.

No Eleven attracts her hostility.

Except for one.

_The silence between them as they traverse the long, quiet hall is abominable. Miss Kouzuki has been through the mansion before, and she knows where to go—or maybe she's still not entirely sure; either way, Kallen's room has to be nearby._

"_He doesn't love you." Miss Kouzuki looks around, surprised, when she hears Kallen speak._

_Forced cheer suffuses her face. "Yes, young mistress?"_

_A dark look passes over Kallen's dirty face. "You heard me. I don't know what you expect to accomplish with this. He doesn't love you. If he did he would never have left you to rot in a ghetto for as long as he did."_

_Miss Kouzuki sees the door that she knows opens up to reveal, and a strained, obviously forced smile twitches on her thin lips. "Here is your room, young mistress. I hope you will find it to your tastes."_

Miss Kouzuki is just the clumsy Eleven maid whom the master of the Stadtfeld house only keeps because he is too kind to have her removed. She is kind and well-meaning, but inept and not to be trusted around fine china.

She adores Kallen; this is obvious to anyone who watches her, perhaps maybe Kallen herself. It's almost the way a mother would feel for her daughter, though everyone also knows Miss Kouzuki to be without children ever since her son passed away years ago. (_In a moment of bitterness, Miss Kouzuki is almost glad Naoto never lived to see this day pass. He looks too much like her to be passed off as Mrs. Stadtfeld's son, and while Kallen's name is just ambiguous enough to not be immediately identified as either Britannian or Japanese, Naoto's name is unambiguously Japanese. Likely the only way he could have gotten out of ghettoes was to become the Stadtfeld's gardener.)_

Kallen does not return the favor. She despises Miss Kouzuki's weakness, mistaking her devotion to her for devotion to Stadtfeld, Kallen's father. _Do you really think so little of yourself, Kallen? _Miss Kouzuki often thinks sadly in private.

There are days, yes, many days, when Miss Kouzuki, who knows all too well why Kallen can not stand to be in her presence and snarls and looks down upon her when she does, is tempted to tell her why, exactly why she is there. It would be so easy, and even if it didn't heal the cracks Kallen would understand, and maybe understand her a little better.

But she won't.

Kallen Stadtfeld is the young mistress of the Stadtfeld family. Miss Kouzuki is not her mother; Mrs. Stadtfeld is. To say such things to the young mistress would be scandalous, unspeakably rude, and while Miss Kouzuki is many things, she is neither scandalous nor rude.

It is not her place to say such things.

After all, she is no one of importance. She's just the maid.

-0-0-0-

_It was so ridiculously easy to acquire the Refrain. All Miss Kouzuki had to do was go to the rumored site of distribution and flash a smile and a few hard-earned coins._

_Kouzuki Hitomi was a girl with hopes and dreams. Miss Kouzuki is a woman with neither. Naoto is dead. Kallen's rebukes and scorn-filled glances, though long since spent, still sting in her ears and burn her skin. Hope was spent in the past, and all Miss Kouzuki has now is her desolation, and a daughter who is not hers anymore._

_All she has is the past._

_And she wants it back._

"_Give me back the days," Miss Kouzuki whispers as she rolls up a sleeve to find a vein as the dealer instructed her. "Give me back my children. Let me be that girl again."_

_The graffiti on the walls starts to fade away and, if she strains her ears hard enough, she thinks she can hear familiar twin peals of laughter in the distance, growing ever closer._

"_Give me back the days."_


End file.
